Reflections of NUS Buddhist Society Management Committee for Lamp Of Wisdom

I believe the others will have told you how hard it is to be a MC and tips on how to make the workload lighter. I'm not going to repeat those.

I'm just going to share on a story that I've just heard. It's about a man and his 4 wives. To shorten the story, his favourite wive, the 4th one he spends the most time with: she is sensual pleasures. His second most favourite wive, the 3rd one he shows off her beauty to the world: she is achievements. His next wive, the 2nd one helps him sometimes: she is relatives. And his first wive, the one he spends the least amount of time with, will go with him wherever he goes. One day, he is to set sail to a far away place, and only his first wive can go with him, the others cannot. His first wive's name is Kamma.

At the instant I listened to all these things, I reflected, there're many things that I do, many little things I'm attending to my 4th wive, while the rest of the "more sensible" world attends to the 3rd wive, and more wive people attend to their 2nd wives more. But in the end, when we die, only our Kamma can follow us, why are we putting so little energy and time to the most important thing in life and after death?

It is the spiritual advancement that one gets the most out of NUSBS. Each time I attend a dharma talk, even on a topic that I knew already, I'm learning something new. I'm realising a deeper level of reality and reinforcing my right view and right understanding of the dharma. Sometimes you feel like you've saturated your understanding of the dharma, that it's all too deep for you to understand, that all these dharma courses and talks and meditations are going nowhere, that your life is happy enough, that you don't need Buddhism. That's just shows you how much more you can learn, cause you're developing conceit there and then.

As the only one who attends all 4 of the weekdays night activities of NUSBS, I'm reaping a great reward, gradually, and cultivating myself inside good circles of spiritual friends that I invite all of you to come join in!